1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a contactless connector that sends and receives data contactlessly. More particularly, the present invention relates to a contactless connector that sends and receives data contactlessly between a light-emitting body or light-receiving body of a rotating-body and a light-receiving body or light-emitting body of a fixed body that lie opposite the light-emitting body or light-receiving body of the rotating body via a reflective body provided in the rotational axis position of the rotating body.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, data has been sent and received between a rotation side and a fixed side in a variety of systems. For example, a camera is provided on a stand capable of rotating and a video signal or the like from the camera is transmitted to a signal processing portion on the fixed side, and so forth. In this case, the video signal from the camera is transmitted to the fixed-side signal processing portion by connecting wiring directly between the camera and the signal processing portion. Further, as a result of the advances in technology from wiring to wireless recently, it is now possible to send and receive data between the rotation side and fixed side even when wiring is not directly connected.
However, although power must be supplied to the rotation side in order to allow image pick up operations and so forth to be performed on the rotation side, there has been the problem that it is difficult to supply power contactlessly from the fixed side to the rotation side.
As a result, conventionally, a plurality of light-emitting elements are provided at the top of a disk-shaped rotating body and a plurality of light-receiving elements are provided in a position on the fixed-body side opposite the light-emitting elements to send and receive data contactlessly and a rotating transformer is constituted between the rotation side and the fixed side to implement the supply of power contactlessly from the fixed side to the rotation side (Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2002-75760, for example).
However, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2002-75760 is not necessarily limited to the possibility of sending all data from the light-emitting elements of the rotating body to the light-receiving elements of the fixed body when the data communication speed increases. That is, in the case of Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2002-75760, the light path from the light-emitting element is sequentially switched to another light-emitting element so that the contactless optical connection between the light elements is not broken in accordance with the rotation of the rotating body. With such a switching method, there has been the problem that the continuity of high speed communications cannot be secured when data transmissions faster than the processing time for switching the light path are required.